Sadly, many more ‘devils’ since Manson

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, November 25, 2017

Charles Manson on Jan. 14, 1970, headed to appear before Judge George M. Dell, who granted him continuance to enter a plea. He died last week.

Charles Manson on Jan. 14, 1970, headed to appear before Judge George M. Dell, who granted him continuance to enter a plea. He died last week.

Photo: Ben Olander /TNS

Sadly, many more ‘devils’ since Manson

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When I was in elementary school, my mom declared that Charles Manson was the devil.

She’d been reading “Helter Skelter.”

The dog-eared paperback was creepy; the cover was black with red letters. The words Helter Skelter were made to look as if they’d been scrawled on the top half of the cover. The subtitle, “The True Story of the Manson Murders,” floated underneath. My mom caught me thumbing through the book and told me to leave it alone. The book was written way over my head, but being told to put it down made me want to read all about the true story that was being kept from me.

I got the main idea.

“Helter,” “Skelter,” “True Story” and “Murders” were big, scary words in our bilingual home. My parents, aware that their daughter was always eavesdropping, were careful to keep ugliness away. We watched “El Chavo” and “Happy Days” and everything aired with the CBS special presentation lead-in, especially the Christmas stop-animation specials about Rudolph. When Eyewitness News at 10 came on, it was time for me to leave the room and get ready for bed, and if I wasn’t snoring by the time the newsreel came on, there was trouble.

But people were talking about the Manson Family. A made-for-TV movie based on the book aired everywhere — but our house. Pictures of a wild-eyed Manson and the people who did his bidding were all over The Weekly World News and other supermarket tabloids. The neighbor kids with lesser media restrictions were considerably freaked out.

At the time, Manson was the ultimate boogeyman, much worse than El Cucuy or La Llorona. Manson swayed a group of fair-haired, middle-class young people to do things so terrible they could only be fully revealed within the pages of Vincent Bugliosi’s creepy little paperback. Nobody could understand how he did it or why they listened. Who but the devil himself could be more crafty?

Over the years, Manson made the news every time he and his family members were denied parole. He shook his permanently disheveled hair as he ranted, he stuck his tongue out at the camera, and the swastika on his forehead seemed the least bizarre thing about him. He became America’s most notorious criminal.

But symbolism is funny. Goth rocker Marilyn Manson took the surname to up his creepy factor. U2, Aerosmith, Motley Crue and Siouxie and the Banshees all covered the Beatles song “Helter Skelter” despite the fact that it had become synonymous with Manson’s crimes — although if they’d re-recorded “Yesterday,” it wouldn’t have been more than a throwback to the ’60s. Maybe this took some of the chill off the name Manson.

Or maybe it’s because America grew up. We called Manson the devil, but have since met criminals far creepier. Today, we have prime-time series that focus on criminal atrocities uglier than those featured last season. We have drills designed to protect elementary school pupils from live shooter situations. And we have internet profiles on the evil that humans have been inflicting on one another for centuries before anybody ever heard of Charles Manson.

Manson died in prison last week, having lived a long life locked away but not far from the public eye. Good riddance; he was a terrible person who really did embody evil.